In the afternoon on November 16th, Tian Xutong’s Zen Ink Painting Asia Tour was opened in Singapore HaKaren Art Gallery grandly, with Mr. Xiao Jianghua, cultural counselor of China's embassy in Singapore, Mr. Cai Enrong, a famous theorist and painter in Singapore, Mr. Xie Ke, curator of this exhibition and director of HaKaren Art Gallery along with nearly one hundred of artist, collectors and all walks of life present at the opening ceremony. First of all, Counselor Xiao Jianghua, on behalf of China’s embassy in Singapore and himself, expressed the warm welcome of Tian Xutong to hold his art exhibition in Singapore and wished the exhibition a complete success. Then, Mr. Cai Rongen gave an excellent speech on the Zen wash paintings of Mr. Tian Xutong, themed “less is more”. There were 38 pieces of Zen wash paintings created by Mr. Tian Xutong in the recent years on show in this exhibition.
In his Zen Ink paintings, Mr. Tian Xutong utilizes the concise lines and points and the schematized symbolic language to conceal the complicated technologies behind the paintings, creating the “soul-realize” space between reality and surrealism inadvertently. This seemingly easy skill is actually integrating the skills of multiple schools of painting and carrying forward the traditional skills of Ink painting. Facing with the diversified modern arts, Tian Xutong has been trying to blend his own painting language into the ideological dialog. By using the restlessness and the pursuit of utility brought about by the accumulation, washing and scour of the tide of time, he has demonstrated the long-lost and precious purification and tolerance. It is so rare that the paintings have presented the poem-like artistic conception, without losing the study on modern thinking.
Mr. Tian Xutong, graduated from Central Academy of Art and Design in 1985, has been teaching in the Central Academy of Art and Design since graduation. Today, he is the associate professor of School of Academy of Arts & Design , Tsinghua University. Mr. Tian Xutong has held over 10 large-scale solo exhibitions in National Art Museum of China, Gallery of DaJue Ancestral Buddha Temple, Art & Julia's Gallery, etc; over 20 joint exhibitions; and published over 40 volumes of personal art albums and works.